saically remarked.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it's so apt to leave one of us sailing under false colors,"
was his somewhat oblique way of explaining the situation. "I might
have hung on until something happened, I suppose, if I hadn't shown my
hand. And I hadn't quite the right to show my hand, when you take
everything into consideration. But you can't always do what you intend
to. And life's a little bigger than deportment, anyway, so what's the
use of fussing over it? There's just one thing, though, I want to say,
before we pull down the shutters again. I want you to feel that if
anything does happen, if by any mischance things should take a turn
for the worse, or you're worried in any way about the outcome of all
this"--he indulged in a quiet but comprehensive hand-wave which
embraced the entire ranch that lay in the gray light at our feet--"I
want you to feel that I'd be mighty happy to think you'd turn to me
for--for help."

It was getting just a little too serious again, I felt, and I decided
in a bit of a panic to pilot things back to shallower water.

"But you _have_ helped, Peter," I protested. "Look at all that hay you
cut, and the windmill here, and the orange marmalade that'll make me
think of you every morning!"

He leaned a little closer and regarded me with a quiet and wistful
eye. But I refused to look at him.

"That's nothing to what I'd like to do, if you gave me the chance," he
observed, settling back against the tower-standard again.

"I know, Peter," I told him, "And it's nice of you to say it. But the
nicest thing of all is your prodigious unselfishness, the unselfishness
that's leaving this talk of ours kind of--well, kind of hallowed, and
something we'll not be unhappy in remembering, when it could have so
easily turned into something selfishly mean and ugly and sordid. That's
where you're _big_. And that's what I'll always love you for!"

"Let's go down," said Peter, all of a sudden. "It's getting cold."

I sat staring down at the world to which we had to return. It seemed a
long way off. And the ladder that led down to it seemed a cobwebby and
uncertain path for a lady whose heart was still slipping a beat now
and then. Peter apparently read the perplexity on my face.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'll go down one rung ahead of you. Even if
you did slip, then, I'll be there to hold you up. Come on."

We started down, with honest old Peter's long arms clinging to the
ladder on either si